ABSTRACT
The decision to publish a series of studies in public address is cause for celebration. Twenty years ago, such a venture might well have been derided as a last-ditch reactionary effort, on the part of scholars whom the field had passed by, to join in a misbegotten protest against “the tyranny of relevance.” As the conventional wisdom would have it, public address was the dominant subject of study in the field of rhetorical scholarship during most of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Within the academy, public address courses are again fashionable, attracting healthy enrollments. Another sign of health is that scholars in other fields are discovering the role of public address. To be sure, they are not citing our work as often as we would like, and they sometimes remain oblivious to the discipline of Speech Communication.
